YOU PROMISED

"YOU PROMISED"

"Here I am, I'm here in front of you, in your image, in front of the one they invented in order to give a face to who you really could be, but not everyone remembers how you really are.

I feel the warm wind in my hair, coming from the cornfields behind my back, I see the golden light entering your remote home in a dreamlike nature.

Above me, as I was coming here, a blue sky full of perfumes made me feel good, as if an incredible peace had fallen in my soul.

A thought came to my mind since I started down the road that leads to this little house of yours: "You promised"

A kind of dream made a few nights ago, someone you know, seeing me in a moment of weakness, took me to a faraway place, like the antechamber of your home and with him I saw all my life again.

And not only that, it made me relive the moment when when I was not yet in my envelope, I stood in the midst of so many others like me made of light and heard your voice telling me:

"Your time has come, the time has come to begin your experience beyond the light ... However, know that I promise you, besides all this, an incredible fortune that you will understand during your journey, this will be given to you as a prize. "

I woke up with a strange feeling, I had to meet you.

Here I am now in front of you, until recently I didn't understand what my luck was and you know it, you always knew ...

And I've always wondered about it all my life: "You promised ... But you didn't give me any luck."

Yet during all these years I had not understood, I had understood only now while I was walking towards you. You have already known my story, always, perhaps even before I lived it.

As soon as I was born I had lost my mother to a long, difficult birth, so a bad, absent grandmother and a father had raised me then and always in their eyes that accusation: "It was you who killed her when you were born".

After a short time, my father had remarried with a mum's friend and for me it had been a pain when I knew it and then understood what had happened since I was born.

My most beautiful and carefree age like that of so many children as I was, I had spent in a boarding school for the poor, they, the one that was to be my family, could not bear the presence of that child who remembered so much the another, that silent, succumbed boy of new brothers who grew as arrogant as my father.

Then I found myself of age outside the college with a useless degree, ending up in a smelly factory with a hard job, living in a studio apartment in the shabby outskirts of the Po metropolis.

Then called by an uncle, I had gone to live with my grandmother, the one who accused me as a child, got sick and nobody wanted to take care of him because of his character.

In addition to the care I gave her, trying to avoid arguments and arguments, she only knew how to tell me that she had killed her daughter when she was born black and that I had brought misfortune in her family and meanwhile asked why the sense of duty and guilt forced me to stay with this lonely and sick stranger?

And meanwhile I waited for the promised fortune.

After her disappearance, the one who had married and had children with my father, had decided to leave him for another man obviously as soon as he became seriously ill as his mother.

Moved by pity and left behind the painful memories of the past, I had taken care of him and in the meantime I created a family of mine by marrying a good girl whom I met at work.

My wife hated my father and after so many years my three children, once they grew up, took different paths, one of which ended up in prison for drug dealing and use.

How shame had been felt when everyone looked at me accusingly, as if we parents weren't good fathers and mothers.

When a few years later my father died in an institute where only I went to visit him, my wife, as my stepmother did, left with two of the three children, for a man different from me, more solid and stronger, more concrete, I wasn't too present and I always had problems.

And meanwhile I was always waiting for the promised fortune.

When one day, they called me from the prison hospital because my son was seriously ill, introducing me to the room that smelled of medicine, there was no one beside that poor boy and he was consciously crying of the sorrow he had caused us and of the attempted my help to get him out of that nightmare, he had gone into my arms and apologized, I remember kissed him on the forehead and held him close to my heart.

I cried all my tears, I had even insulted you then, I was disappointed by your failure to promise, that fortune I should have had.

Then one day the company closed its doors and the job was finished remaining at home unemployed.

Alone looking around I had found something to do, two jobs one of which was not in order, both poorly paid but at least I could live decently.

Living up to that day seven years ago, when the machinery that operated a colleague and friend of mine came at me.

I had opened my eyes in the hospital after all that had happened and on my table there was a vase of tulips which, he, my colleague had given me, had been close to me with his family and had tried in every way to help me.

Even Antonio lost his job and our employers won every cause that we had tried to give them but in the meantime the luck still didn't come.

My colleague had time to give me a wheelchair when he and his family disappeared on that plane crashed into the sea while he was looking for luck on the other side of the ocean.

I remember that I had screamed at you against everything, was it not possible, had I lived a life on the verge of pain and promised luck?

Many months later on a fall day, a beautiful lady who looked after disabled people asked me if I could help her in her "school of life", a school that was used to face those who had never accepted a malformation, a defect, a loss of part of one's body.

I don't know why he had asked me, it was a morning like this, luminous, she looked at me not far away in that institute of friars in which I had gone to live after having received the disability pension.

She was beautiful with her green and young eyes, then when she got up from the girl her husband approached her while in the park of the structure, I had just after checking on a letter given to me by Father Luciano, the charge of my pension in the bank.

The two of them had been kind and had explained to me what the job consisted of.

I had accepted immediately because, in that while inside of me I had reviewed my son's gaze as he died in my arms.

Even then the promised fortune had not arrived and I did not understand if you had lied to me then or there was something I did not understand, but I had consciously realized that I could do something for others and also for myself.

Here, now I am here in front of you, in this little house of yours, immersed in nothing, created by who knows who, I know that soon someone will come and talk to you like I am, but I would like to finish my one-way dialogue.

In fifteen years of working with those gentlemen, I cried a lot in seeing those people we were helping, I laughed with children, old people, young people and their relatives.

We visited many beautiful places, played, sang and built another structure and school in another city.

My help like those of others had been fundamental for many suffering people and despite the pain of loneliness, I was not.

Despite a very hard life, my mind had found solutions that were sometimes beautiful and incredible in supporting those who had the pain inside.

When this morning, I had decided to come to you to ask you why the promised fortune had never arrived, on the road I had seen a cart with a little man selling colored tulips and I remembered my awakening after the accident and the look of my friend that I had lost time later.

I understood at that moment, what my luck had been: I was myself, what I carry inside, what life of sacrifice and pain had given me over the years and brought as help to those who needed it, to those with sweet looks I was helping until recently.

Here I am in front of you to apologize, for not understanding, it doesn't matter if I've lost everything, if I've been in a wheelchair for almost twenty years, it doesn't matter if they don't show me my grandchildren or who I loved and you are forgot about me.

I have so much in my heart to give, I have inside that "something" that gives love and help to those in need and at the same time I helped myself to heal from the invisible evil.

On this road this morning I discovered happiness and being what you promised me, a lucky man.

I had it under my eyes but I didn't understand.

Now I salute you, I will often come to visit you, your small and serene home in a green paradise I like and comfort me, my Lord, my father.

The wheelchair is already far away on the road that leads to the nearby city, the small church with the ancient wooden crucifix and the mosaic of the Lord above the vault, really looks like a small paradise.

Behind a curtain, after the altar a priest witnessed the whole scene and the words of the man, without showing himself for modesty and respect.

Now the priest with tears on his young face, is on his knees before the crucifix and the veiled blue look is turned towards that magnificent mosaic where the face of the Father seems to look at him smiling.

"My Lord, forgive me now I too have understood what is the fortune that you too had promised me a long time ago, I felt it in my heart but I did not see it and this poor man, no ... I'm sorry this extraordinary man made me today understand the true meaning.

Here I am here at your will and service with love and I thank you for what you have given me and that like that man told you with heart and spirit: I promise you that I will look for him in the city and he will never be alone again. Thank you".

The young priest gets up and almost runs towards the exit, no one is on the road anymore but a scent of roses from the front garden affects his sense of smell, closes his eyes and feels a lot of love inside him.

"I will come looking for you whoever you are and I will thank you for what you gave me today."

The sun illuminates the green fields and the pale buildings of the nearby city, a warm and fragrant air invades the air, today for two people life has turned into a different love, a great love.

Giampaolo Daccò Dos Lerèn.